Consumers continue to demand and expect high quality, highly personalized interactions with internet based products and services. Simultaneously, web retailers constantly look for opportunities to reduce the rate at which user's abandon their web sites prior to completing registration and abandon shopping carts before final checkout. There are many reasons why users abandon interactions with websites. One reason is consumers are often distracted or confused when interacting with websites. Distractions can be caused by interruptions or simply by rushing or simply a change in expectation i.e. registration to the website is required. For example, social networking sites typically require registration. Many times a user will often become bashful or unwilling to share information. Although the term “web retailers” are used through out this application, it is important to note that the term Lead generation (commonly abbreviated as lead-gen) is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business' products or services. Often, lead generation is associated with marketing activity targeted at generating sales opportunities for a company's sales force. Therefore, a lead is correctly described as information regarding or provided by a consumer that may be interested in making a purchase. Whereas, generation is one of a myriad of activities that may produce that information and perceived interest.
In order to reduce an abandonment of a shopping cart or web session by a user, several retailers have begun using chatbots. A chatbot (or chatterbot) is a type of conversational agent designed to initiate conversation with humans in auditory or text forms. Web-based chatbots are designed to automatically answer any questions and inquiries over e-mail and text messaging. Most chatbots simply scan for one or more keywords within the input and pull a reply from a database.
Chatbots although useful are not without their challenges, problems and shortcomings. One problem is that chatbots are not easy to deploy and maintain. Third party services take websites and create scripts for chatbots tied to a given website. The web retailer must rely on third party services to not only create and deploy chatbot for a particular website, but also to receive reporting data on how the chatbot is performing.
Another challenge with deploying chatbots is that the scripts and other artificial intelligence (AI) are not managed by the web retailer. This is a problem because the web retailer has no information on the traffic exiting their websites. For example, how many users exit a website, why the user exists, and the information about the user including demographics or other information such as what keyword responses are being used and no way to track results.
Accordingly what is needed is a method and system to overcome the problems with the deployment and management of chatbots and to provide a management system to web retailers using chatbot technology.